mitchell reports," a bout last night, president obama and governor romney, what both are saying about their debate performance. >> when i got on to the stage, i met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be mitt romney. but it couldn't have been mitt romney because the real mitt romney has been running around the country for the last year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts that favor the wealthy, the fellow on stage last night said he didn't know anything about that. >> last night i thought was a great opportunity for the american people to see two very din visions for the country. and i think it was helpful to be able to describe those visions. i saw the president's vision as trickle down government and i don't think that's what america

believes in. >> overnight polls and "the denver post" give round one to romney. as a republican challenger went after the president's record. >> i just don't know how the president could have come into office, facing 23 million people out of work, rising unemployment, and economic crisis at the kitchen table, and spent his energy and passion for two years fighting for obama care instead of fighting for jobs for the american people. >> the president faulted romney for being too vague. >> at some point, i think the american people have to ask themselves, is the reason that governor romney is keeping all of these plans to replace secret because they're too good? is it because that somehow middle class families are going to benefit too much from them? no. >> the sharpest exchanges over taxes and deficits. >> he is saying that he is going

to pay for by closing loopholes and deductions. the problem that is he's been asked over a hundred times how you would close those deductions and loopholes, and he hasn't been able to identify them. >> everything he said by b. my tax plan is inaccurate. if the tack plan he described was a tax plan i was asked to support i would say absolutely not. i'm not looking for $5 trillion tax cut. i won't put in place a tax cut that adds to the deficit. >> 18 months he's been run on this tax plan, now five weeks before the election, he's saying that his big, bold idea is never mind. >> let me repeat what i said. i'm not in favor of $5 trillion tax cut, that's not my plan. the two men even disagreed over whose turn it was to speak. >> jim -- the president began this segment so i think i get the last word. so i -- >> you get the first word in the next segment. >> but he gets the first word of the segment and i get the last word. let me make the comment. >> let's get back to medicare.

>> i had five seconds before he interrupted me. >> and ready to rumble, steven colbert helps train jon stewart for his weekend showdown with bill o'reilly, that is if he doesn't chicken out first. >> jon, you're in worst shape than i thought. i'm going to have to take this to another level. full immersion. guenther, fetch me chucker carlson. thank you. >> so, after i use the chicken to wash your car. >> yes. >> am i ready? >> no. not even close, because to defeat bill o'reilly you must first catch the bird, wax my car with the bird and absorb its soul, the bird to defeat bill o'reilly you must make the bird into a chick-fil-a fillet

sandwich. >> no. that is completely absurd! do you want to win? >> i do want to win. >> let the training begin. >> all right! ah -- >> good day. i'm andrea mitchell live in denver where mitt romney took the fight to president obama in wednesday's debate. last night it was the president who often seemed remote and disengaged. joining me now on the phone from the president's speech that he's just had in denver is chuck todd, of course, traveling with the president. chuck, what's the explanation from team obama as to how ill prepared the president seemed to be for this? i think chuck todd is with the president. i guess they've just taken off. we're joined now for our daily fix with chris cillizza, msnbc contributor and managing edter of post politics.com and ruth

marcus and politico editor in chief, john harris. chris, first to you. your scoring of the debate and what you think the president's strategy was or wasn't going in. >> i don't know what his strategy was, but whatever it was, it wasn't particularly good, andrea. you know, the thing that i was struck by the whole time is optics matter. this is television. how you look, how you present yourself matters. barack obama, honestly, kind of looked like he would have rather have been almost anywhere but there. he looked tired. he looked kind of grim and dower to theic tent he had expression, expressed himself a smirk directed at something that mitt romney said. i don't know if there's any one reason why he wasn't himself, but he very clearly, he certainly wasn't the barack obama of 2008 in terms of the campaign. but he wasn't the barack obama we've got tonight know over the last four years who is a realist

about the challenges facing the country, but he's not a pessimist about those challenges. struck me last night, he might have not been pessimistic in the language he used but his body language was very kind of grim, which is not what people are looking for. the president and his team know this, not what people are looking for in a leader. >> well, let's ask chuck todd who has just rejoined us by phone, whether the president regained his mojo today. what was his performance like at that rally in denver? >> it's like if you've ever gotten into a debate or argument and you lost and then you thought of all of these great comebacks and you came up the next day, that's what it sounded like today. i mean literally he even had remember the account line last night at the debate, mitt romney starts talking about an accountant, you saw the president's eyebrows raised dur the cutaway shot. here he said i think mitt romney had an accountant comeback.

all of a sudden what you heard from the president today were sounded like all of the rebuttals that the campaign wished he had last night. in talking to the campaign, andrea, i can tell you that, you know, the excuse they're chalking this up to, the president, this is the first time he's gotten to size him up in person and they admit they're going to recalibrate the next time. one thing to point out, andrea, all of these folks that came to the rally, i talked to, i don't know, almost a dozen different people here, all supporters of the president, almost all of them universally expressed disappointment in the president's performance last night. >> and those same people there, waking up to the denver post today, round one romney, is the big headline here today. so, chuck, this could have a real impact on battleground colorado. >> well it could. that's what's going to be interesting, how much of an impact does this have and, you

know, talking to folks in colorado, i think there is softer support for both of them. the question for the romney campaign, does this move the need until wisconsin, ohio, iowa. those are the three places. they did it in striking distance in the other battleground states. the three states were the president's campaign hit them hard on being out of touch with the middle class, you know, did mitt romney move the needle there? and that's, i think, in the next four to five days, that's the first number i want to see what's coming out of those three, the midwestern battleground states. >> chuck you off to wisconsin. so the president is immediately going to one of the key battlegrounds, which is a test of this performance and what their next strategy's going to be. >> it is. it's madison. they're going to have a big crowd there, you assume probably something close to five figures in the crowd, since it's on the

university of wisconsin campus. you can see here, you have a couple of thousand people. the president fed off of that energy especially even as the cold air here, i know you're outside, so it's cold. you know that feeling here. the president obviously speaking more energized there, i would assume, we'll hear a more energized president and refine his rebuttals yet again in a couple of hours. >> chuck todd, safe travels. thanks so much for the report. and still with us, john harris and ruth marcus. ruth, first to you, because you saw the performance last night and it had all of the feel of an incumbent president who has not been challenged who has been in the oval office, who didn't do enough debate preparation or maybe they weren't tough enough with him. >> well, i think one other thing might have been going on, which is that his goal was not to do himself any harm, maybe hi did himself harm by not being sharp

enough. there was also, i think, some folks in the campaign believe this, a danger on the other end. this president does not do pit bull very well. remember, you're likable enough, hillary. he didn't want to come off as annoying, arrogant, dismissive, towards romney because he is in the driver's seat in terms of being ahead, even though slightly and narrowing in the polls. i think we did see today, chuck had it exactly right, a sharper crisper, more acerbic barack obama, and i suspect we'll see that in the next campaign. but i'm a little bit contrarian here. i thought the president was not at the top of his game, but i also thought he was avoiding a potential pitfall on the other side. >> i did talk to some campaign people and they said that they had deliberately talked to him about not getting too mean. but i think that's why he was looking down, that split screen was damaging because this is a

television event, and he looked unhappy. he looked mean, according to some people who just were looking at the screen themselves. mitt romney was aggressive but smiling. john harris, politico editor in chief, whae eigh in here. >> i'm not contrarian but i listen to ruth's counterconventional wisdom because she's a shrewd observer. >> totally wrong you one or the oth other. >> it's rare, et cetera specially the night of the debate, journalists are cautious, they fought to a draw. it's very rare that impressionistically, stylistically there's a clear triumph of one side over the other. i would caution, however, i do think it's true, that for most voters, they're not judging this as theater criticism. they're not judging it on stylistic grounds. they are fundamentally approaching this as citizens

asking who's got the better plan. who whose idea speak more to me personally. there's a danger in overinterpreting what was an emphatic result stylistically. there's a danger of overinterpreting what that will mean substancetively for the race. >> chris cillizza, "the washington post," your paper's editorial today, takes aim at both of these candidates for substance, for evading the hard truths, they said. >> right. >> both candidates maintained omissions at part of their policies, the debate was wonky without being especially honest. which deducts would mr. romney curtail to avoid as he insisted he would having the lower tax rates he proposes add trillions to the debt? he didn't say. onmaintaining he would not under any circumstances raise the taxes on middle in americans. how would mr. obama strengthen social security over the long term must be done? he didn't explain, only a tweak

is needed. the president saying that he would -- that he had embraced simpson-bowles. >> he had not. >> if you ask simpson and bowls, he did not. he gave them a pat on the back and sent them out of the rose garden. you're right. we went into this and said there's two guys debate, there's 90 minutes, almost exclusively focused on the economy, we'll get some meat on the bone here. but we forgot that this is politics. there are less than five weeks to go before the election, and there are certain things, mitt romney's tax plan, barack obama on social security, barack obama on simpson bowls and debt reduction, they don't want to put meat on the bone. people criticized the moderator. i'm not sure if the moderator pushed more for specifics if they decided i'm not going down this road, and they both clearly decided that on social security for obama, on tack plx plan for

romney. i don't know how much cajoling will get them. barack obama being better today than he was last night, here's the problem. let's say there were 5,000 people at that rally. 50 plus million people we expect to have watched the debate last night. that's the issue. you need to be at your best when the audience is massive. you know, being good at a rally with your supporters is a lot easier than being good at a big, giant event where you're being directly confronted by the guy who wants your job. >> chris cillizza, ruth marcus and john harris, thank you all very much. and how does mitt romney capitalize on his debate performance? going forward, senior adviser and former new hampshire governor john sununu won't be shy about telling us. that next. first the battle over big bird. >> i like pbs. i love big bird. i like you, too. but i'm not going to keep on spending money on things to

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can mitt romney's strong debate performance last night become a turning upon for his campaign? joining me now, john sununu, former new hampshire governor and chief of staff to president george h.w. bush, now a top

adviser to the romney campaign. governor, i know you're not going to be shy, so how do you think he did? are you pleased by the performance he's gotten rave reviews universally. >> what people saw last nigh, i think, was a president that revealed his incompetence, how lazy and detached he is, how he has absolutely no idea how serious the economic problems of the country are, and how he has failed to even begin to address them. and i think even the liberal press reacted with shock at this revelation, and i find it fascinating now this morning, after they've slept, to watch them all scrambling around to clean up the mess the president left on the floor last night. on the other hand, mitt romney came in with a lot of specifics, a lot of very sharp knowledge of issues not only with the obama version of bumper sticker numbers, but the governor showed that he understands policy and he understands how to make policy into law, talking about

what he did in massachusetts. >> governor, i want to give you a chance to maybe take it back, did you really mean to call barack obama the president of the united states lazy? >> yes. i think -- i think you saw him admit it the night before when he delivered the pizzas. he said, you know, they're making me do this work. he didn't want to prepare for this debate. he's lazy and disengaged. >> i think that there certainly was a performance issue there and whether or not he was in his best perform last night, a lot of people are questioning that, just the one-on-one against mitt romney, mitt romney turned in a very strong performance. but i think to call the president lazy and disengaged is another question. >> whatever. >> we've been doing fact check on both sides. questioned whether the president was accurate when he said social security only needs tweaking, we've questioned a lot of issues. mitt romney, let me ask you a

couple of questions about what he's had to say about taxes. he said, i will not reduce the taxes paid by high income americans. the tax policy center and other independent economists have said -- no, no just the tax policy center. >> to keep -- let me finish the question -- to eliminate the alternative minimum tax and eliminate the estate tax. we'll give the top 1/10 of taxpayers an average break of $250,000. >> look, look, andrea, mitt romney pointed out that one of the things that he would do is to put a cap on the deductions. the tax policy center admitted that what they analyzed was assumptions they added to mitt romney's plan that are not deduction. >> which deductions. >> let me finish. i let you finish. now let me fin. >> yes, sir. >> the tax policy center

admitted that they made assumptions that were not part of mitt romney's tax plan. there are six or seven follow-up studies that say romney's tax plan can do what the governor has said he would. he's going to eliminate or cap deductions on upper income brackets there is more enough in the basket of choices there to take care of providing the to 20% tax reduction to the middle class. >> no, there are not. >> with all due respect to what obama people are putting out, they're wrong on it. >> i'm not talking about what the obama people are talking. first of all, those are not six or seven independent studies, one is an editorial, these are not nonpartisan groups. >> the heritage foundation, aei? >> those are not nonpartisan independent studies. hardly. >> there is nonpartisan and independent as the tax policy people are. >> when did -- when did the governor first come out with

saying that he would cap the deductions? this week? in a local interview? >> no, no, no. he has said what we will do is deal with the deductions that are there that when taken have reduced the capacity of the government to get revenue. and we will compensate for our reduction in the rate of 20% particularly for the middle class by addressing those deductions. in some case removing them, and in some cases means testing them. means -- one form of means testing is to put a cap on it. >> governor, he has not been specific about which deductions. is it the mortgage tax deduction? >> absolutely not. he shouldn't be. >> why shouldn't he be? >> why shouldn't he tell voters now? >> bud what you need to do -- >> middle class voters are among those most affected by some of the deductions. is it the charitable deduction? doesn't he owe the american people the specifics of how he would come up with the dollars. >> may i answer?

>> excuse me. how he would come up with dollars to match the bush tax cuts being continued and the other eliminations such as estate tax and alternative care tax. >> listen carefully. there is more than enough in the basket of loopholes that will be reduced or capped to cover the governor's commitment to reduce taxes on the middle class. you do not, you do not begin negotiation with congress either on a bipartisan basis or any basis in a campaign. if you read woodward's book, you will see that one of the president's biggest problems is that he didn't know how to negotiate. mitt romney knows how to negotiate. you put all of the items on the table and then you come to the table. everything is on the table in that basket. it is liable to be eliminated or means tested or part of the capping process. the solution is to select among those from negotiation.

that solves the problem. >> governor, it took three years for the best negotiator in the business, ronald reagan, to achieve tax reform back in 1986. three years. >> only took us seven months under bush one. we put together a package because the president led that. the president met with foley, the president met with mitchell, he went down to congress to meet with them. he met with them in the white house. i was involve in negotiations with them and saw a president show leadership to get a bipartisan agreement. it didn't take him three years. it took him seven months. >> and the bush tax cuts are going to be continued by a president romney and then he will first begin negotiating with a new congress to try to come up with the money to pay for them? the bush tax cuts were continued by barack obama in 2010. they're in place now because

barack obama supported them. he supported them because he recognized, as he said then, raising taxes when the economy is loudy is the wrong thing to do. he may not know it, but the economy is still lousy. you don't raise taxes now when the economy is lousy. >> to be continued, as always. governor sununu, thank you for joining us. >> thank you, andrea. how will last night's debate impact the undecided vote here in battleground colorado? that next with democratic congressman -- congresswoman diana degette next on "andrea mitchell reports." of what'sot? check out the latest collection of snacks from lean cuisine. creamy spinach artichoke dip, crispy garlic chicken spring rolls. they're this season's must-have accessory. lean cuisine. be culinary chic.

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night because almost all of the people afterwards, including the president's supporters, were very mystified by the performance he turned in. >> andrea, i was -- i was in the audience, of course, and i thought the president looked tired. i was offended at governor sununu said the president was lazy. it's just the opposite. heat been dealing with middle eastern crisis and of course the domestic jobs issue and everything else. i thought he looked tired. but i also thought, sitting there in the hall, that mitt romney looked overly aggressive. when i thought about it later i thought to myself he didn't flesh out any of the issues he was talking about. he said he wouldn't raise any taxes for rich people, he said he was going to do vouchers for medicare. all of the things he's been -- he's going to defund big bird, too. i think that definitely he had a more energetic performance. i don't think, in places like

colorado, that's going to impact the undecided voters who really want to know about the various candidate's policies. >> tom brokaw met with several undecided voters in colorado this week and asked what they hope to get out of the debate. let's play a little bit of that. >> looking forward the debate to see which of two candidates can position themselves, in my mind, to do a better job for the country. i see all of the advertisements. i have problems deciphering what is true, what is not true. so i think head-to-head, on television, hopefully that will bring some clarity to my decision. >> but there doesn't seem to be a lot of clarity. in fact "the washington post" editorial we were referencing earlier said both candidates avoided explaining and being specific. there are a lot of areas on jobs and deficits and taxes where they talked about their hopes and what they planned to do but didn't explain how they were going to accomplish it.

>> andrea, i thought the president did a better job of talking about where we're at, why we've passed the policies that we have, like the affordable care act, obama care, and what would happen if governor romney's policies came in to effect. governor romney, i don't think he had any specificity. the best example he said just trust me with these elimination of these deductions. and as you pointed out earlier, that could mean the elimination of the mortgage home deduction for middle class homeowners, the claire ritable deduction for contributions of people to make to churches and if you're not going to be specific, what you're going to cut it really is fuzzy math, as we've been seeing from the vice presidential nominee, paul ryan. so i do think voters are want to see some meat around the bones of those specific proposals. i think that's what undecided voters in places like colorado want to see. the other thing, i'll point out is, female voters in colorado

are concerned about governor romney's health care policies. i was disappointed that nobody talked about that last night. and i'm hoping they'll discuss it in one of the future debates. >> congresswoman, why didn't the president bring up women's issues? why didn't he bring up the 47%? >> i don't know. he didn't call me, so i -- i think maybe he got so much into the details of the policies that he was talking about, he was trying to explain how his policies are really going to benefit the middle class. but in fact, i really think both candidates should have talked about how the affordable care act, for example, gives equity in health care to women, how it gives women mammograms and cervical cancer screening and how it gives them birth control. but you know i don't think the voters are going to make up their minds just based on one 90-minute debate. i think they're going to be looking at all of the policies as weeks go by.

we have several more debates and i i think these issues need to be discussed in much more depth. >> congresswoman degette, thanks for being with us. what is the obama campaign saying today? next, press secretary ben labolt. [ le announcer ] there are only so many foods that make kids happy. and even fewer that make moms happy too. with wholesome noodles and bite sized chicken, nothing brings you together like chicken noodle soup from campbell's. it's amazing what soup can do.

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around last night, which is he can't pay for that $5 trillion tax cut for millionaires and billionaires, and raise defense spend dgz 2 trillion to a level the pentagon hasn't even asked for without raising taxes on middle class families. they're refusing to specify what deductions they'd eliminate to pay for it. >> now, there have been factual questions about what the president said last night about social security, about deficit reduction, he claimed $4 trillion deficit reduction. he's double counting, there's a gym nick there, according to the nonpartisan committee for responsible federal budget because he talks about the savings of $1 trillion from winding down the wars in iraq and afghanistan, which were deficit financed to begin with. both sides were fudging, and both sides are guilty of fuzzy math. but in terms of sheer performance, the president seemed to have left it in the locker room, did he not prepare well enough? >> well, listen, i don't think we viewed this as a steel cage

match. our goal with last night for the president to lay out his plans to restore economic security for the middle class and there's a choice in the election between building the economy for the middle class out, making investments in education, reducing the deficit, and mitt romney's plan, the same policies that led to the economic crisis in the first place. mitt romney had a different strategy. he engaged in an act of performance art last night, something that james lipton would have been proud of, but it was ultimately a substanceless performance. he wouldn't specify where he stood on issues. he wouldn't say what he would replace the affordable care act with. he would cover people withpreexisting conditions or not for people with preexisting conditions between jobs or between plans. we're going to call out exactly where mitt romney stands on the issues and make sure that every vote there understands his aexat position. >> diana degette was disappoi

disappointed the president didn't raise the women's issues and point out what at affordable care act, obama care, whatever you call it does for women. >> i think those issues will certainly come up along the campaign trial in the week as head. we've got paid advertising up on these issues talking about the positions that mitt romney has taken. saying he'd get rid of planned parenthood. i heard your questions about the 47% as well. i think that's most effective in mitt romney's own words. we've got the verbatim up, mitt romney in his own words, writing off half of the country, saying they won't take personal responsibility upon their lives. they've heard that directly from mitt romney. >> are you going to change your strategy for the next debate? >> the one thing i think we will do is given that mitt romney wouldn't tell the truth about his record, is make sure we spend time correcting mitt romney's record. anytime he says he'll replace wall street reform with regulation but won't specify what is it, we're going to call

that out. it won't be at the debate. you'll see that along the campaign trail and out of chicago as well. >> does this put a lot of pressure on joe biden to be a clear winner, at least break even with paul ryan next week in the vice presidential debate? >> i don't think any one event is going to decide this election. you've seen the past year and a half the polls are xloes aclose competitive in key states. you saw the economic choice start to crystallize. and us winning key battles on issues like taxes when people think it's krizy mitt romney would raise taxes on middle class families to pay for tax cuts on millionaires and billionaires. mitt romney called him intellectual head of the republican party. so we anticipate stiff competition on the stage next week as well. >> ben labolt, thank you very much. >> thanks for having me. >> where does the race go from here? the strategy section next on "andrea mitchell reports." d a br new light chicken pot pie soup

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sflo how does the president regroup at day after joining me for an alysis on the debate, te divine and john fury. john, first of all, congratulations are in order. you're a new father. tell us about the baby. >> baby meili kate, 7 pounds, 14 ounces, great health. mommy's in great health. we're excited, close down the street and thrilled to have little molly in our family. >> we've got a picture. she's beautiful. congratulations. that's more important than anything else that we can talk about today. >> thank you. >> so that is the big news today. and ted divine, you and john have been in the situation with candidates before. ted, you were closely involved with the john kerry campaign and al gore campaigns. what went wrong last night for barack obama? >> well, andrea, you know i think we have to credit governor

romney who came in there with a real plan, with a real strategy and he executed it it. i think he performed well. the president, for those of us who support him, was not as aggressive as we would have liked to seen. i have looked at cbs and cnn poll, the president's performance was not as good as governor romney's, i'll stipulate, the president made progress with voters, who has a plan for the next four years, progress on things like who cares about you, even on his leadership dimension. governor romney did better on all of those dimensions. nevertheless the president moved forward with critical voters. in the end the debate is a bump in the road, to borrow one of his expressions but i think that's all it will be. >> do you agree with that, john, that -- go ahead. >> i think this was a bad debate for the president. i think it could be a harbinger of things to come. i think the president was dull. i thought throughout the debate

he offered nothing new, gave a lot of the campaign slogans. mitt romney was interesting, very energizeder very active, knew his stuff very well. first time that most voters got a chance to see these two together. i thought that mitt romney did so much better and i think it's going to have an impact on the election. >> tad divine you were with al gore when they were nonverbal moments that really affected his debate performance, the sighs, the gestures, one point going, you know, into the space, that didn't happen last night. in the split skreercreen, it da peer that the president was annoyed or looking down too much, you know. what is your take on that? what was going on there? >> well, listen, i think, you know, they were probably concerned whether or not he would go really hard after romney, you know? romney's the guy with the problem with favorable/un fav

favorable/unfavorab favorable/unfavorable, it's been a big advantage of the president, the fact people like him so much and perhaps that led them to modulate in terms of his tone people will take a second look at romney. and the question is whether or not, not whether his performance, his style will stand up but whether what he said will stand up in the days ahead. there's a lot of scrutiny on whether or not somebody can go in there after campaigning for a year for a massive tax cut for wealthy people and walk way from it in front of the whole nation. if the obama campaign can win the post debate they can make up some ground in the next couple of days in terms of what happened last night. >> and andrea, i don't disagree. i think the next couple of days are crucial for the romney campaign. they've got to put more meat on the bones and let people know his record in massachusetts has someone who could govern in a bipartisan way and get effective legislation done, that's important. telling the full story on taxes, how you don't want to have a big massive tax cut for rich people. if you get rid of that talking

point for the democrats they that's a bonus for the romney campaign. the romney campaign has to be aggressive in the post debate setting to make sure that they are getting their points across because you know the obama team is going hard against them and this is where it's going to be won or lost. >> one of the things that mitt romney did last night, he was giving personal examples of speaking to this person who had a problem, or this person who had a problem, people he met along the trail. he talked about the suffering of the middle class. he was using language, clearly a strategy, and well delivered. and narrative that had been worked out and it did seem that the president didn't have that kind of narrative. i'll let you both jump in on that. >> let me jump up first. i think that what you saw here was that mitt romney took this debate very, very seriously and you know they spent a lot of time going through this and obviously mitt romney knew the points that he wanted to hit. they knew the stories that he

wanted to say. i thought he was very effective. if you look at the president, we said this before, disengaged. didn't seem like he was well prepared and didn't have stories and these debates are so important. i go back to go back to he was talking points and they weren't enough to the debate. >> listen, i think -- >> finally, tad,s is the problem of an incumbent president perhaps distracted and not working hard enough and no one saying, sir, you have to do this? >> i wasn't in the president's debate prep, but i find it hard to believe people with the relationship with him and knowing senator kerry, for example, that the president wasn't subjected to it in the debate prep. the guy walks in the room, and everybody stands up, okay? i think the president is a realist. the president on that stump speech he game, if he delivers that in the next debate, he's going to win it. >> congratulations, and our best

to your family. >> thank you. >> in today's amr moment, some major milestones on the final day of the baseball season and we start in kansas city where the tiger miguel cabrera firned the 2012 season as the first triple crown winner since 45 years ago. detroit hopes his bat stays hot into the playoffs against an unexpected champion out west. there's a division title sweeping the rangers to make the last day of the season their only day in first place. the team with the lowest payroll in the major leagues won 67 of the final 100 games. big momentum into the postseason. the national nightmare at nationals park is finally over. teddy finally crossing the finish line in first place during the fourth inning president's race. it's been a long season for teddy but white house support from jay carney and john mccain helped him finally snag a

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which political story will make headlines in the next 24 hours? chris is back with us. it's jobs, jobs, jobs. that's the next big hurdle for the administration. >> you got it right, andrea. this is the september jobs report due out at 8:30 tomorrow morning. what happened last night in the debate adds drama to this report if it is not a good report. this will further the obama slipping story line. if it was a surprisingly or better than expected report, maybe the debate last night is a thing of the past for president obama. remember, there is a vice presidential debate in a week from today, but it's a little while until the next presidential debate. if the story line is if mitt romney won clearly, bad jobs report, we could go from now until the next presidential debate with with that narrative, which is good for mitt romney and bad for barack obama. >> the last jobs report was in the mix, so this one is more

important. thank you so much, chris. that does it for us for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports." tamron has a look at what's next on "news nation." hi, tamron. >> a victory for mitt romney, but did he win because he's so vague last night. ezra kline joins us. what might be the million dollar question. why didn't president obama bring up romney's 47% remarks? bain capital or even more details on romney's taxes. well, patrick gaspar from the dnc will join me live. we'll find out what he knows. our "news nation" political panel today are all with me live, and we have some breaking news regarding the fbi now in libya. "news nation" is up next. [ male announcer ] attention medicare beneficiaries.

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